Has it really been a month?

It's been almost a month since I last posted!

In the past month, I have trained and trained until I couldn't get out of bed in the mornings. If you have done the math (goodness, I hope you haven't), you know by looking at my miles that I've taken a couple weeks off.

They haven't been weeks in a row and on my off weeks, I have still run my long Saturday morning runs. But that's what happens to runners when they're in training: Sometimes we get tired.

I have had at least two full weeks during which I have been unable to get out of bed in the morning. Thoughts popped unbidden into my mind about giving up on the Air Force Half Marathon in September. My shoes started to mock me. Coffee started to taste horrible. The sun refused to rise early enough. Sleep stopped refreshing.

This is the first year I've listened to my body this well. When my brain and my feet stopped working together, I let it be.

I rested.

My first year doing this I walked a full marathon. My first event and I went all out! I was thoroughly overtrained. I had no idea what I was doing. I walked and walked for hours, but it was therapeutic and I never had little voices telling me to quit and coffee remained an early-morning friend. I had little injuries and a sports med doctor who told me runners are the worst patients. But every moment was full of something closely resembling fear. What if I can't do this?

Sure, I'm a few years older. True, this training period is the longest I've done running. Yes, this summer has been hotter and more evil than the first.

But I've had more fun this year than the years before and part of that is due to this project raising funds to send AIDS orphans in Tanzania to school so they can escape a life of dire consequences.

Please consider donating to the cause.